Zampino lawyer files second motion to halt fraud trial

Former Montreal city councillor Frank Zampino’s defence lawyer filed a new motion for a stay of proceedings as soon as the Contrecoeur trial resumed at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday after a month-long break.

Former Montreal city councillor Frank Zampino now has two requests pending to halt his fraud trial.

Zampino’s defence lawyer filed a new motion for a stay of proceedings as soon as the Contrecoeur trial resumed at the Montreal courthouse on Tuesday after a month-long break.

The defence cites Zampino’s arrest in September on fraud and corruption charges related to calls for tender to award municipal contracts during the early and mid-2000s. He was arrested while the Contrecoeur trial was on a break.

Zampino’s motion calls his arrest in September “egregious” and an abuse of procedure since he’s in the middle of cross-examination by the prosecution in the Contrecoeur case. The latter concerns a municipal land deal in 2007 while Zampino was chairman of the city executive committee and as such the No. 2 politician at Montreal city hall.

What makes the situation more egregious, the motion states, is that the two police investigations that led to his arrest in the Contrecoeur case in 2012 and to his more recent arrest are “very closely linked” with some of the same witnesses and accused.

Since he’s in cross-examination in the Contrecoeur case, for example, Zampino’s defence team isn’t permitted under the rules for legal proceedings to speak to him about his testimony even though he faces charges in a related case, the motion says.

As well, when he was arrested in September on the second matter, Zampino signed a promise to appear in court at a future date so he can be formally charged. That hearing is set for Nov. 8. However, the promise to appear limits his contact “with at least one person who was obviously a potential defence witness in the present case,” the motion says, referring to Zampino’s former administrative assistant while he was in public office.

His defence lawyers had asked the prosecution repeatedly during the trial whether he was facing impending arrest in the second matter to “allow him to properly appreciate what jeopardy he faced,” the motion says.

Even if the judge does not agree to halt the trial, which is a trial by judge alone, the motion calls on the judge to order that Zampino’s cross-examination be stricken from the court record.

However, Court of Quebec Judge Yvan Poulin, who is presiding over the trial, refused the defence’s request to interrupt the cross-examination to hear the motion to stay the proceedings right away.

Poulin said in a ruling on Tuesday afternoon that he didn’t agree with Zampino’s lawyer, Isabel Schurman, that hearing arguments on the motion only at the end of the trial would cause irreparable prejudice to Zampino.

Instead, Poulin ruled the new motion would join another Zampino motion to halt the proceedings that has already been set to be heard at the end of the trial in early November. The other request stems from police wiretaps that captured some of Zampino’s conversations with his lawyers.

Meanwhile, Poulin lashed out at the prosecution after Zampino’s defence presented him the motion, saying he doesn’t understand why “I find myself in this situation.”

“What was not desirable happened,” Poulin said of the timing of Zampino’s arrest, which he noted was in the control of the Crown and the police.

“It was avoidable,” Poulin said.

The judge’s ruling on the timing to hear Zampino’s latest motion included conditions, such as allowing Zampino to speak with his lawyers during his cross-examination. Poulin’s ruling also acknowledges the Crown’s agreement to see that the conditions that were applied to Zampino’s promise to appear following his latest arrest be “clarified” as soon as possible.

Zampino’s cross-examination is now scheduled to resume on Tuesday. Two more court dates had been set for this week. However, Schurman requested the time to examine new evidence that was disclosed to the defence on Friday.

Meanwhile, lawyers for some of the other accused at the Contrecoeur trial are to appear in Quebec Superior Court on Wednesday and Thursday to witness the unsealing of 45 search warrants related to the second investigation that led to Zampino’s arrest in September. The defendants have not been arrested, but expect they are named in some of the warrants.

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